Right now, the Opel Insignia/Buick Regal/Holden Commodore is a confusing car. It’s a sedan developed by General Motors, on sale in North America, Europe, China, and Australia, built in Germany, but now operated by a French automaker. This confusion stems from GM’s decision to unload Opel earlier this year to the PSA Groupe.
In the near future, Holden will need to make a decision surrounding the future of the Commodore, which comes from Opel. According to a Motoring report published on Sunday, the brand has two options, per Holden managing director, Mark Bernhard. The first is to renew its trading partnership with PSA Groupe to continue supplying the Commodore. PSA is working quickly to move all GM-era vehicles onto its own architectures. Conceivably, the ZB Commodore’s follow-up could be even more French.
“PSA’s really comfortable selling products to us, and we’re working closely with them,” he said.
The second is to lean on Buick in future. Previously, GM Authority reported that Holden may choose from GM’s entire catalog of vehicles, save for the Cadillac brand. That makes Buick an obvious contender for future Holdens. Buick also builds the current Regal and Holden’s Astra (Buick Verano) in China.
“At this stage, both [Opel and Buick] options are still on the table; we’re not at that point in the product lifecycle where we need to make those decisions,” Bernhard explained. A decision is about 12 to 18 months out, he added.
Right now, the current 2018Â Buick Regal Sportback and 2018 Regal TourX have short lifecycles. PSA previously said it wants to move all Opel cars off of GM platforms by as early as 2021. That means a decision to work with PSA, engineer a replacement or kill the car will come sooner than once imagined.
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Buick is always a possibility; but GM of Shanghai which appears to be doing much of General Motors advanced design concept and engineering work where many products like the PHEV Cadillac CT6 and XT5 were seen first makes it an ideal source of leading edge GM automotive products.
In other words, not much will change.
Opel-Vauxhall-Buick-Holden has been a sort of hyper brand for some time now.
Now, we are left with Buick-GMC-Holden with much of the Holden designated product probably headed for other RHD markets.
Holden must offer top notch autos now more than ever and Buick, as well as GMC, offer GMs finest product.
If GM re-enters Europe it will be with Buick, too.
as long as BUICKS and GMC are made in the USA !!!!
If they’re sourced from China then they won’t sell. Already the general public believe much of the future product is coming from China. At the moment Chinese brands Great Wall, Cherry and LDV are selling vehicles here and only the Great Wall pick-up manages some sales (to farmers and young broke trade apprentices) and the LDV van/mpv to most of its fellow ex-pat countrymen….
GM needs to rapidly expand product in Thailand where Australia has a free trade agreement and sees a lot of vehicle imports.
The Buick Regal is built in USA.
The Buick Envison is made in China and sold in the USA the last two years. In a partial year it sold just over 14,000 units in the USA last year. This year 35,000 units with December to go – making it the second highest Buick in sales behind the Encore which had just over 78,000 units last year and will exceed 80,000 this year. At #2 most people don’t seem to care where it is built as long as the quality is the same. Time will tell of course if the GM factory in China has the same quality as those in Europe, Asia, and the USA (if they use six sigma correctly it should not be a problem but with GM that has been hit and miss for them since they adopted it in 2005).
This is the time for the come back of RWD Impala, Lacrosse and Commodore with sports variants for the Impala and Commodore with V8 engines.